A man's pride is sensibly gratified by rising, as it is called, in the would, and placing himself on an equality with those to whom he was once inferior.But the further they are above him, the greater his difficulty in raising himself to their level, and the less his hopes of any gratification to mere vanity from this source.It is, I apprehend, in a great measure on this account, that as capital increases, there are fewer instances of laborers making vigorous efforts to accumulate property.Vanity, losing hopes of acquiring distinction by accumulation, is entirely occupied in exciting to dissipation.The laborer seeks preeminence in displaying his abilities to spend, and employs any spare funds he may possess in the purchase of fineries, in treating his companions at the ale-house, and in similar extravagancies.
The prevalence of such habits and sentiments among the laboring classes, produces various evils.Neglect to employ any part of the earnings of to-day, in making provision for the wants of to-morrow, every now and then, when that morrow brings nothing for itself, gives rise to severe suffering.
The condition of the laborer fluctuates between abundance and dissipation, and want and misery.The society loses, first, the benefits of that stock, which the laboring classes accumulate in a better state of things.It loses, also, the amount requisite to keep the laborer from starvation when in necessity, or to raise up other laborers, to supply the place of those who perish from want, or the diseases consequent on it.These may be called direct evils, those which are indirect are much greater.
Waste accompanies dissipation.When laborers are in general improvident and extravagant, very many of them must be dishonest.Men are naturally suspicious of persons whose expenditure exceeds the bounds of prudence, and they have too often reason to be so.Honesty is at last the best policy, but it is only at last.Deceit and knavery very often succeed better at first, and, therefore, people who look not beyond what is present and immediate, are very apt to resort to artifice and fraud, to get rid of the necessities which their extravagance brings on them.Hence, such a state of things would imply much watchfulness, many checks and contrivances to guard against fraud and violence, and much loss, both from them and from the expensive machinery necessary to restrain them.The most prejudicial, however, of all the mischiefs that belong to our subject, brought on by vicious principles of action pervading the lower classes, is the gradual spread of similar manners and feelings through all the orders of the state.The middle and higher classes of society may be said to rest upon the lower; when decay, therefore, infects the foundation, the structure must fall.By looking back for a generation or two, we shall find that nearly all the capitalists in the nation have sprung directly from the people, and that to them we must finally trace the greater part of that honorable enterprise, frugality, and perseverance, which have given prosperity and power to the state.When the principles that actuate the great lower and sustaining mass have a large mixture of benevolence, self-denial, and probity, and when there is nothing in the institutions of the society keeping them down as a degraded caste, there is a constant mounting upwards of the elements of health and strength, giving firmness and vigor to the whole body politic; when, on the contrary, the proper vices of the higher ranks, luxury, extravagance, and their attendant evils, instead of being counteracted by a continual infusion of the severer manners, and mere self-denying morals, that should belong to the lower, find those orders partaking as far as possible their follies and levities, admiring them, and if required ready to minister to them, we may assure ourselves that much unsoundness lurks beneath whatever show of prosperity the outward condition of national affairs may exhibit.
It will, I believe, be found that, in civilized societies, decay has generally thus proceeded from below upwards, and that a deficiency in the lower classes, of the principles exciting to economy, has gradually checked accumulation and invention throughout the whole body, and at length produced universal degeneracy and decay, and introduced the reign of waste and violence."Semper in civitate, quibus opes nullae sunt, bonis invident; vetera odere, nova exoptant; odia suarum rerum mutare omnia petunt."The experience of all ages proves the justice of the observation of the Roman historian.That state can never enjoy tranquility, which is oppressed by a crowd of "Hungry beggars, Thirsting for a time of pell-mell havock And confusion."But to trace at length the connexion between these is impossible, without reference to the subjects of rent, and of population, which are not embraced in our plan.I may, however, in conclusion, observe that though, for the sake of simplicity of exposition, I have assumed, all along, that the wages of labor constitute an invariable quantity, I yet conceive that, in a society making a steady and healthy progress, they should rather be continually increasing, the laborer as well as the capitalist, gaining something by the improvements which the progress of invention produces.
CHAPTER XV.OF THE WEALTH OF NATIONS AS A BRANCH OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDUCTION.
